There are so many amazing monuments at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. This is one of the art deco ones to memorialize Charles F Beck (1892-1928). Whenever a hurricane makes landfall, I always wonder how much more the city can endure. It is a city of resilience, so I would never count it out.
The Besthoff family is prominent in New Orleans. Sydney J. Besthoff (1871-1926) started K & B Drug Stores with Gustav Katz in 1905. The stores were all over the southeast until 1997, when they sold to Rite Aid.
Sydney Besthoff III (1928-2022) and his wife, Walda, were known for their interests in the arts and sponsored the sculptural garden in City Park behind the New Orleans Museum of Art. I assume that Sydney was also laid to rest in the family tomb. I am unable to confirm this, but considering the love of sculptural art that Sydney and Walda have, it is logical that this would be a part of the family plan.
Chapman Henry Hyams was a millionaire stockbroker and art collector in New Orleans. Hyams built a mausoleum for his family that was designed by noted New Orleans architects, Favrot and Livaudais. The marble monument was dedicated to his sisters and is a copy of William Wetmore Story’s Angel of Grief. Blue stained glass windows bathe the angel in blue light.
I became curious about the sisters since they were not in the mausoleum. Jacabeth Caroline Hyams (1848-1859) is buried in the Dispersed of Judah Cemetery in New Orleans. Her father and other siblings are buried. I was unable to locate where the mother is buried.
Gertie Sarah Hyams moved to New York. She married Wayland Trask, a New York stockbroker, In the Louisiana census in 1872, she is listed as Sarah or S. G. By the time she moves to New York, she is identified as Gertie. She passed away in 1877 and, her final resting place is in Woodlawn Cemetery.
The Aldigé family was a prominent New Orleans who lost three family members on the sinking of the SS La Bourgogne on July 4, 1898. Alice Aldigé, daughter Amelie Bordé, and granddaughter Amy Bordé lost their lives when their steamship collided with another ship. The great loss the family experienced inspired the monument of the two grieving angels. While the tomb serves as a cenotaph for the three family members lost at sea, it’s now the final resting place for at least 13 family members.
You may wonder how a tomb could hold so many family members. It’s likely due to the practice of placing bodies into a vault, and within a year, the body has decomposed just to bones due to the hot, humid air of New Orleans. For the more recent deaths, family members were probably cremated.
